Carl Luna is a professor of Political Science at San Diego Mesa College and a lecturer on politics and international political economy at the University of San Diego.
Carl writes for CityBeat semi-regularly. Look for him at the CityBeat website or in the print edition, from any of our 1,400 boxes around town. New editions available every Wednesday.

I Couldn’t Have Said It Better

“If the Republican Party really wanted to hold on to the White House in 2009, it’s pretty clear what it would do. It would grit its teeth, swallow its doubts and nominate a ticket of John McCain for president and Mike Huckabee for vice president — and president-in-waiting.”

Which is what I’ve been saying about McCain as top of the ticket since May and about Huckabee as Veep for a month. The McCain nod is based on my theory of legacy candidates (such as McCain) historically doing better in their party nominating processes than establishment candidates like Romney and Rudi or insurgent candidates like Huckabee. The Huckabee pick is pure politics — if the Republicans are going to win (which is an up-mountain struggle, at best) they are going to have to get out the conservative Christian vote big time, not just in Red States but in the Purple ones like Ohio and even Florida. Either marriage and abortion flip flopper Rudi or abortion and everything else flip flopper Romney will have a very hard time doing so. McCain-Huckabee just might.

So, early projections: Romney comes in first, Huckabee second and Rudi third in Iowa on Jan 3.. The story the next day is not McCain number four, it’s Rudi’s a loser. The story is also not Romney came in firts , which he has been forecasted to do for months but is Huckabee’s a near winner. Meanwhile a Huckabee win in Iowa basically turns both Mitt and Rudi into dual losers. Then, a week later, Huckabee comes in 2nd or 3rd in New Hampshire (as he’s bet the farm, so to speak, on Iowa) and John McCain (you know, the guy who won the Granite State in 2000) ends up well postioned to win again. Then it’s off to South Carolina where Uber-Yankee Rudi and kinda-Christain Mitt (not my slur — bottom line, as offensive as it may seem to social inclusionists, a lot of the conservative Christian voters in the state that brought you the Civil War may not see through Romney’s Utah roots) may have a hard time against southern Governor Huckabee and solid social conservative McCain. By Tsunami Tuesday, it may all be over.

One Response to “I Couldn’t Have Said It Better”

Please elucidate on how the Republican Party is going to sell McCain as fit to be President when they worked so hard to prove he was unfit 8 years ago. The reasons he was unfit in 2000 are still valid in 2008 if they were valid at all.

President Huckleberry may sound very American but it doesn’t sound very presidential.